Extinct - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Extinct . ‘no longer in existence; that has ended or died out’ For example: Dinosaurs are extinct dictionary.reference.com. 1: The Dodo ( Raphus cucullatus ).

Copyright Complaint Adult Content Flag as Inappropriate

I am the owner, or an agent authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of the copyrighted work described.

Download Presentation

PowerPoint Slideshow about 'Extinct' - dacey

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation

Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author.While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server.

Native to the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, was known to mankind for less than 100 years ... but that's all ittook for us to eradicate the species.It wasn't so much that humans killed the stubby, rotund birds directly, but our decimation of their habitat and food source did an awful lot to hasten their demise.And then there are the pigs, dogs and other predators that we introduced to the isolated island, where they ravaged the birds' nests and generally harassed them.

How do you go from being the most common bird species in North America to being nothing more than a sad footnote in American history?

Well, it helps if you taste good.

While passenger pigeons were hunted as a crop nuisance for years, it wasn't until pigeon meat got popular that things took a turn for the worst. It also sure didn't help that westward-bound settlers were chopping down the birds' habitat at an alarming pace.

The last passenger pigeon died in a Cincinnati zoo in 1914. Her name was Martha.

Land cows eat grass, but these "sea cows" once grazed on kelp in the Bering Sea.

A relative of the smaller, much-beleaguered manatee, the gentle sea cows were over 25 feet long and may have weighed as much as 10 tons.

By the time German naturalist Georg Steller found and described them in 1741, their population was already threatened, perhaps due to hunting by indigenous peoples.

Their extermination would quickly continue with the arrival of Alaska-bound European fishermen and seal hunters. The sea cows were rapidly hunted for food, skins (used to make boats) and oil (for lamps), and by 1768, less than 30 years after Steller found them, the Steller's sea cow was extinct.